Bruins Don’t Streak Out

By the time DeShaun Foster finally made a freshman mistake it didn’t even matter.

With less than four minutes remaining in the game Saturday, Foster fumbled just before the goal line and the ball went out of the end zone for a touchback.

All it meant was Foster scored only four touchdowns instead of five, and UCLA beat USC by only 17 points, 34-17, instead of 24.

Ten games into the season and this is Foster’s first goof, one whose only harm was a missed opportunity to give his team some margin-of-victory style points and put his name in the school record books.

As it stands, his four touchdowns tied the record held by nine other Bruins. It is a record for a UCLA true freshman, but that little consolation prize doesn’t seem appropriate anymore.

With Foster, “true freshman” is starting to become a title that sticks around out of habit, the way people still address George Bush as Mr. President. If Foster’s performance in this pressure-packed game came as a surprise, you just haven’t been paying attention to the Bruins this year.

“He doesn’t look like a freshman,” Bruin center Shawn Stuart said. “The thing I keep hearing about DeShaun is he looks like Eric Dickerson. Being a Rams fan as a kid, I can see that. He’s a strong runner and he’s not going to go down on the first hit--and that’s just pretty to watch. Especially as an offensive lineman, to see a running back get more and more yards and to be able to shed tackles and things like that, it’s pretty to watch.”

When Foster heads toward the huddle, his teammates don’t say, “Here comes the freshman, be ready to cover for him.”

Instead, Stuart said, offensive tackle Kris Farris is more likely to say, “DeShaun’s in the game; he’s not going to go down on the first hit, so stay on your blocks.”

When UCLA needs three yards Foster will get them, even if it means dragging a defender for the last two. When they need a touchdown to regain momentum, Foster’s good for that too.

The Bruins haven’t merely used him this season, they’ve relied on him. He leads the team in rushing with 556 yards, and he sat out a game because of a knee injury. (Second-place Jermaine Lewis has 465 yards.) He has scored a team-high 12 touchdowns.

With Lewis out against Arizona and the Bruins reeling against an inspired Wildcat team, Foster kept UCLA in the game with two first-half touchdowns and 118 yards in what turned into a 52-28 victory.

The Bruins weren’t in jeopardy Saturday. Foster scored all of UCLA’s touchdowns and rushed for 109 yards. USC threatened briefly. Foster didn’t let it last long. After a Chris Claiborne interception set up a touchdown that cut UCLA’s lead to 14-10 in the second quarter, Foster came back with a 65-yard touchdown run 55 seconds later.

Foster made it sound simple, a matter of good blocking and hitting the hole.

“He also brushed [USC cornerback Daylon] McCutcheon off his left side,” UCLA quarterback Cade McNown said. “There was more to it than that--I got a chance to watch.”

Foster generally leaves it up to others to rave about his highlights.

“A guy like that, with so much athletic ability, could be really cocky, but he isn’t,” Stuart said.

A typical Foster comment is: “I really didn’t expect to come in and play like this. I just wanted to come in and contribute, help out any way I could.”

He was asked if he had ever had any big games like this in high school.

Considering he scored 59 touchdowns and rushed for 3,398 yards at Tustin last season, he could have brought up any number of games. Instead, he smiled sheepishly and said, “I guess so.”

That’s his idea of talking about himself. And this kind of performance is usually his way of contributing.

It’s getting tough to imagine where the Bruins would be without him.

He wasn’t in the game when UCLA had two drives that stalled inside the USC 30. The Bruins gained only nine yards in their feeble third quarter, and Foster had six of them.

Why wasn’t he used more in the quarter? He was sick and dehydrated.

His remarkable day was that much more impressive because he was recovering from strep throat.

He started feeling it Thursday, but hoped a few cough drops would take care of it. By Friday he was feeling even worse.

“I didn’t go to the team meal or anything,” he said. “I just went straight to the hotel after meetings. They just kept me away from the other players. I pretty much haven’t eaten anything, just soup and stuff.”

Foster didn’t even choose to gloat about his triumph over USC freshman quarterback Carson Palmer, whose Santa Margarita team beat Tustin for the Southern Section Division V championship last year.

Sure, it felt good, Foster said. That was about it.

“High school is high school,” Foster said. “This is a new chapter.”

It’s the same old story for UCLA-USC, though. Eight in a row for the Bruins, with this scary thought for Trojan fans: Foster has three more years of eligibility remaining.

Another game like this, though, and the NCAA might get suspicious and declare him a sophomore.

It’s obvious he already has the hang of this college football thing.

“I’m not going to say that I have everything figured out yet, but I’m picking up things pretty good,” Foster said.

Looks as though he has. And even though he might not want to talk about it, it’s never too early to start thinking about the 1999 Heisman Trophy.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com